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The 2008 AASHE Digest came out last week. It's a compendium of short blurbs describing sustainability-related activities and achievements at AASHE members colleges and universities. As I mentioned when the 2007 book came out, it's a yearbook rather than an encyclopedia. As a result, it gives only a snapshot of a process which is constantly changing, but it's a pretty large snapshot. "Panorama" might be a better term.

-- I don't often get excited about amending forms, but if President Obama is able to simply the FAFSA in a meaningful way, I say, Hooray! The FAFSA is the form that students and prospective students have to fill out to apply for Federally-backed financial aid, and it's worse than the 1040. It's just horrible. Kafka would have considered it over-the-top. I'm not a believer in the "it should fit on a postcard" theory, but surely there's middle ground between a postcard and a dissertation.

The first few weeks of graduate school, several facts became apparent. I am sure that I should have realized these long before moving to a new city and beginning a Ph.D. program, but I have to admit that I did not. They have, however, strongly influenced the path my life has taken, and deserve some discussion.

OK, I can admit when I'm wrong. I shouldn't have used the term "social class" to refer to various strata of folks on campus. While sociologists may disagree about how many social classes exist or what the criteria for differentiating among them are or how stable a particular class hierarchy might be, they pretty much agree on the definition of class. That definition includes (in the words of William Domhoff), "patterned ways of organizing the lives of its members from infancy to old age that create a relatively unique style of life, and ...

After being in a relationship with my current partner for almost as long as my marriage lasted, I decided that it was time to read about stepparenting. Even though I’m the one with the biological children, and my partner’s the stepparent, the title — The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Stepparenting -- convinced me to buy the book…

As you might have heard, my first novel has just been published, and this makes me so happy that I want to make you happy too. No, Rory, no more piggyback rides; I’m talking about a raffle with prizes from some of my well-placed friends!

Why do so many states require only two years of math in high school?
In a discussion this week about the struggles we have with developmental math classes, someone mentioned that this state, like so many others, requires only two years of math in high school. That means that even many brand-new grads come to us not having done math in two years, and having stopped out before they even got to trig. Then everyone is shocked at low pass rates in developmental math.

For the past nearly two months I’ve been working towards some sort of new normal as I recover from and work with my doctors to figure out how to live with the illness I never dreamed would turn our family life so utterly on its head.

Many years ago, in one of those gender theory seminars, I remember a remark to the effect that men have the privilege of being able to choose to dress 'unmarked' in a way that women don't. The idea was that American culture had settled on several different uniforms for men, depending on the context, and that men have the option of wearing those uniforms if they want to fit in and not draw particular attention to what they're wearing.